Almosts
by BOC42
Summary: A small story highlighting an evening that Admiral Janeway might have experienced not long before Endgame. J/C


This small story explores an evening in the life that Admiral Janeway experienced prior to altering the timeline in Endgame. Call it a pre-Game fixer. Of sorts.

I do not own Voyager or any of its intrepid crew. However, they might own a part of my soul. I also do not own Elizabeth Barrett Browning's lovely poetry.

Admiral Kathryn Janeway wanted to cry. She knew it was ridiculous, but her head and heart were heavy with the weight of dozens of tiny problems, minutes of conversations, hours of meetings, pitching up at her now, of all times. Ironically, she had to admit that it had been decades since the end of the semester had taxed her so much.

She wanted to escape everything, just as she had longed to years ago in her early twenties as finals, papers, projects, and a myriad of personal issues assailed her every semester. She had no escape then except to hold out against the storm, stubbornly telling herself that it made her stronger. To hell with being stronger, today she felt downright fragile, and she wanted to hide.

Very deliberately, five hours ago, she had decided to spend the entire weekend hiding from Starfleet, her cadets, Tuvok, and the rest of the universe. She all but fled her office, stopping in her tracks only as long as it would take to pick up the to go order of lamb biryani, vegetarian's delight, and buttered naan.

She buzzed his apartment door her customary three times before entering the passcode and stepping inside.

"I thought you might visit one of these days. It's almost the end of the semester, right?" His voice wandered through the front hallway to meet her. "You brought dinner?"

A grin spread across her face as she hooked her jacket on the coat rack and she gathered up the boxes. "Don't I always bring something?" she called back.

They met in the kitchen doorway with the customary embrace and kiss on the cheek.

"It _is_ the end of semester, isn't it?" His dark face smiled at her.

"Yes. I wanted to hide from the universe for a while."

"Are your cadets _really_ that bad, Kathryn?"

Chakotay replicated a carafe of water and some glasses. She got the plates from the cupboard, and they sat down next to each other at the table.

"A few are. It's just everything on top of each other, and I feel fragile this week."

He slipped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

"Is that terrible of me?" she asked after a few bites.

"No," he replied. "Everyone is entitled to feel fragile every now and then. And you of all people have earned the right to hide for a while after this semester."

Kathryn smiled at Chakotay. "Why do you think I came here?"

He grinned back. "The same reason I still keep a guest bedroom. So you can hide."

They chuckled together, their foreheads brushing, before resuming their meal.

From an outsider's perspective, Admiral Janeway and Commander Chakotay had the strangest relationship it was possible to have. Her cadets certainly thought so. She only ever talked about Chakotay in professional terms with them, even though he had long since resigned his commission. But the cadet's parents and their other professors, they all talked about the infamous Admiral and Commander, and they knew the facts.

Thirty-nine years ago, Captain Janeway had been sent to capture the Maquis Captain, Chakotay, and his crew. Instead, the two crews had been stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Out of necessity, they had merged their crews and began a journey home that lasted twenty-six years. In that time, the two of them had become close – very close. Despite this, Commander Chakotay had married Seven of Nine, who died three years afterwards. He had never appeared to get over it, at least that was what people said. He was certainly heartbroken, but some people very quietly wondered over _whom. _ Because now, safe and home, Chakotay and Admiral Janeway's close friendship had reasserted itself, and seemed to be tripping over nearly every line that stood between friends and lovers. They were frequently seen together in public. He was at every party, promotion, and reunion that she was at. She was at every lecture, book signing, and awareness campaign he was at. Always there, standing quietly behind the other, the same quirky smile. They both had that identical quirky smile and speculation was rampant as to who learned it from whom. Janeway's aide confirmed that Chakotay commed and messaged her nearly daily, and she reciprocated. They had lunch dates. They met for a walk every Thursday at 1400. Rumor was that sometimes they stayed at each other's houses. But almost everyone, for one reason or another, was fairly certain that sex hadn't entered the picture.

Why? It probably had something to do with old habits, stubborn heads, parameters, the imagined necessity for punishment, and the fact that they both had loved Seven. The Doctor once remarked to Reg Barkley that neither of them could just let Seven rest in peace.

From the perspective of their old crew, this behavior was remarkably similar to their friendship on Voyager. They were a team. A pair. The leaders. But somehow, never a couple. Tom Paris in particular found this odd. They exhibited all the same behaviors that he and his wife did, but they weren't together. He wasn't sure whether it was healthy or not.

But whatever other people thought of their seemingly strange arrangement, Janeway and Chakotay were as close to completely happy in it as they probably could be. Happiness, to them, was not exactly something they imagined to be attainable anymore. So they settled for almosts.

They finished dinner, washed the dishes together, and retired to the den. Chakotay sunk down on his end of the couch, picking up his padd and resuming the article he was working on. Janeway wrapped herself in her blanket and curled up on the other side with a book.

An hour later, Janeway put down her book (Jane Eyre) to see Chakotay watching her comfortably.

"Yes?"

"You look much more relaxed than when you came in."

She smiled and rolled forward. "In nearly thirty years you've almost never failed to make me feel better, Chakotay. There's a reason I come here when I need to hide."

He leaned towards her and tucked a silver strand of hair behind her ear. "Yes," he answered softly. "And it's the same reason you come home some nights and find me asleep on your couch."

She twisted her fingers into his. "How many times do I have to tell you that you can just go into the guest room? It's _yours, _you know."

He grinned. "And I keep telling you that I don't want to give you a heart attack when you find me there. You get home late sometimes. You work too much for someone of our age."

She ignored his last comment.. "I _know _when you're there. I can smell your aftershave."

"Really?" he asked, taken aback.

She shrugged. "I've known that smell for a long time now, Chakotay. I know when you're in my house."

He looked at her for a while longer, then tugged at her hand. "Come here and read to me," he said, inviting her.

A minute later Janeway was resting against him, both of them enveloped in the blanket, and she was softly telling him about Jane Eyre's efforts to learn German.

It was a common way to find the two of them, cuddled up against each other, reading. The blankets and the arms kept out all the daily worries the two of them accumulated. The words kept at bay the long history they shared – making a medium between the intense physical desire they used to experience (and honestly, still did some days) and the hard and uncomfortable past that was his marriage to her "daughter" (which they both knew had been _almost _completely wrong. Almost.).

Most nights this would end with another embrace, and a chaste kiss on the cheek, then one of them heading for the guest room. Other nights, the comfort was so complete, that without any discussion, they decided to accidentally fall asleep on the couch. It was never an accident, and they never apologized for it or even discussed it the next day. But some nights found them curled up together on the couch, a book sprawled out on the floor below them. His large body would warm her small one, and her small frame would relax him. Their scents soothed each other. Their hands entwined, and their rest was deep.

Tonight was one of those nights. Kathryn eventually laid Jane Eyre across the back of the sofa and she and Chakotay lay down and pulled the blanket around them. Drowning in the comfort, Kathryn turned her face into his chest and threaded her arm through his.

"You're not alone, Kathryn," he whispered. He said this frequently.

She smiled into his chest. "I never was. And neither are you." She responded the same, sincerely, every time.

But there was an empty space after her words.

"Sometimes I still wish," he spoke into the space.

"Me too," she answered.

"What's the old saying? 'If I could turn back time?' I'd do things differently, Kathryn."

"So would I."

There was a pause in which each of them thought a lot of things vigorously at the other.

"Are we both still agreed to die on the same schedule?" Chakotay asked, half jokingly, half seriously.

Janeway raised her chin to look at him. "Yes. But not until the semester is actually over."

They smiled at each other.

"Besides," Janeway reminded him seriously, "I think I would only last two weeks without you at the longest. I would lose my mind."

"I couldn't go through it again," he whispered to her hoarsely. Losing Seven had been hard for lots of reasons; some of them weren't typically related with losing a spouse.

It may have sounded morbid, had anyone been there to listen. But for two old, worn, and battered people who had seen more than they cared to see, whose memories were too full of remembering, and wanted only to find some peace and quiet, the decision to die together was as comforting as young people find it to decide to live together. Janeway and Chakotay had lived and seen and remembered for a very long time. They found that they wanted the other with them when then time came to make the next step in the journey. Death holds little fear when it is met with a good friend after a long life. Death wasn't frightening, even though they had both already been there, and wondered about returning.

Quietly, long after the dark had settled into the room, long after his arm had gone numb from being pinned under her small torso, and long, long after her breathing had turned to the familiar and quiet night sound, Chakotay kissed her forehead softly. He did not stop the hand that came up to her face and touched it. He knew she would not wake. Some small part of him thrilled that Kathryn trusted him with herself so completely, and was comfortable enough to not stir or start when his fingers traced her sleeping face. She knew he did it. She knew that sometimes he would wind the clock back twenty years to another couch in a far distant part of the galaxy. It was dark red hair and a younger body he was seeing in those moments. Quicker motions and faster words. But it was also cherishing that light silver hair and tired, weathered body. Slower motions and more thoughtful words. Those moments when he tried to put a label on her: the inexplicable woman who was all at once his dearest friend, his shelter, his other half, the woman whom he loved in a mixed up haze of all directions. And yet somehow never his lover, never his wife. How could he love this woman so completely and in every way and yet not include wife in the descriptions?

He didn't know. He didn't understand. He just loved. So did she. And so again he just fell asleep with his arms around her, breathing in her clothes and soap and book pages. She slept on, breathing in his sofa and arms and past. They simply loved. They simply slept.

=/\=

Two years later, Chakotay died. It was the middle of the semester. True to her word, it only took Kathryn Janeway two weeks to lose her mind. She did it quietly, privately, and nobody realized it had happened until five months later when she disappeared a few days after the Voyager reunion.

Nobody saw her standing on top of that hill at his grave. Nobody saw the grey book she clutched in her hands. Nobody saw the page she had marked, or knew that this particular book lived in two houses, on two bookshelves and nightstands. And nobody knew, nobody, that this page was now blotted with tears and that t's and y's and k's were all running together on the page, swimming in her sorrows.

So tired, so tired, my heart and I!

Though now none takes me on his arm

To fold me close and kiss me warm

Till each quick breath end in a sigh

Of happy languor. Now, alone,

We lean upon this graveyard stone,

Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.

In the Delta Quadrant, thirty-something years ago and yet only six months after her best friend's parting, Kathryn Janeway died on a Borg Cube. She had told herself – the younger one with dark red hair – that it was for everyone on Voyager. But she knew that it was for herself. She couldn't be without him one more day. Wasn't that what she had told him once? Not a day without you? And that was what she thought very last. There weren't going to be any more days without him.


End file.
